17 Sept 2016

Child poverty continues to grow in Germany

Dietmar Henning

Almost 2 million children and young people grew up in poverty last year in Germany. Children are considered in poverty if their parents are dependent upon social welfare under the social welfare code II, better known as Hartz IV.
The percentage of children under the age of 18 in families claiming Hartz IV rose to 14.7 percent, 0.4 percent more than in 2011. The main centre of child poverty is Berlin. No other city has as many impoverished children or young people. This is based on findings published Monday in a Bertelsmann Foundation study.
The poverty rate in Berlin declined marginally over recent years, from 33.7 to 32.2 percent. “But at the same time, the total of poor children grew because more children moved to the capital city,” according to the study’s authors. Almost one in three children under the age of 18 lives in a family claiming social welfare.
The data for the study was taken from statistics from the federal agency of labour and a long-term study on the impact of poverty on children and young people.
If one considers the regional poverty levels, there continue to be significant disparities. The poverty-stricken eastern parts of Germany maintain much higher levels. Although the poverty rate dropped there since 2001 by 2 percentage points, it still stood at 21.6 percent. This means one in five children lives in poverty here.
In the western German states, the rate of Hartz IV claims rose to 13.2 percent from 12.4 percent in 2011. “The sharpest rise came in Bremen (plus 2.8 percentage points), Saarland (plus 2.6 percentage points) and North Rhine-Westphalia (plus 1.6 percentage points).” Even in the states with the lowest levels of child poverty the rates grew, in Bavaria by 0.4 percent, in Baden-Württemberg, 0.6 percent, and in Rhineland-Palatinate, 0.9 percent.
Other cities along with Berlin have high levels of children under 18 living in poverty, including Bremerhaven (40.5 percent), Offenbach (34.5 percent) and Halle (33.4 percent). Bremerhaven had the highest rate of children reliant on social welfare, followed by Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr region, at 38.5 percent. But close by in other cities in the Ruhr the picture is not much better. In Essen, the percentage of children living in poverty is 32.6 percent, in Dortmund, 30.3 percent, and in Duisburg, 30 percent.
According to the Bertelsmann study, children with only one parent or with two or more siblings are especially likely to live in poverty.
“Of the total of children reliant on state welfare benefits, 50 percent live with a single parent and 36 percent live in families with three or more children.”
For many children, poverty is a permanent state of affairs. Fifty-seven percent of children aged 7 to 15 claimed social welfare benefits for three years or more.
This has wide-ranging consequences for children. A metastudy co-authored by the Institute for Social Work and Social Pedagogy (ISS) showed, “Compared with children of the same age in families with a secure income, impoverished children are more frequently socially isolated, lacking in material resources and are in poorer health.”
They often do not have their own room to relax in or complete schoolwork undisturbed. Poor children eat less fruit and vegetables and have poorer health in general, particularly with regard to the health of their teeth. There is rarely money available for monthly passes on public transport, let alone extracurricular activities or hobbies like sport associations or music classes. A holiday is a luxury.
It is no surprise that the education prospects for poor children are much more challenging. “The longer children live in poverty, the greater the risk that their fate will be negatively influenced,” said Annette Stein from the Bertelsmann Foundation. Children from households claiming Hartz IV seldom make it to university.
The Bertelsmann Foundation and many media outlets have pointed out that the growth in child poverty does not fit with reports of economic growth in Germany and an increase in the number of people in work.
The Bertelsmann experts account for this by referring to missing data. “Due to missing data, we cannot explain why, in spite of growth in the economy and employment figures, increasing numbers of children rely on Hartz IV,” said Sarah Menne, project head of family policy at the foundation.
This is absurd. Firstly, there are a number of studies demonstrating that higher employment figures do not result in a rise in gross economic output—i.e., the available work is divided up among more people; poorly paid, part-time jobs are expanding.
Secondly, the “economy” is not directed towards reducing poverty and meeting the needs of the population for education, health care and leisure. The major concerns seek profits and look out for interests of their shareholders. And here the rule applies: the smaller proportion of turnover received by the workers, the greater the profit. The wealth of shareholders at the one pole of society determines the poverty at the other pole.
The increase in child poverty is also not a result of “mistaken or bad family policy,” as those responsible for the study at the Bertelsmann Foundation or in the opposition parties claim. Sabine Zimmermann from the Left Party said, “The problem of child poverty has been known for years, but the federal government remains inactive.” The social policy spokesperson for the Green Party parliamentary group, Wolfgang Strengman-Kuhn, raged, “It is a scandal that 2 million children in Germany are reliant on Hartz IV.”
This is disingenuous. Child poverty is the result of a deliberate policy of redistribution from the bottom to the top in which the Left Party and Greens have been deeply implicated. The Hartz laws and “Agenda 2010,” which the federal SPD/Green government of Gerhard Schröder and Deputy Chancellor Joschka Fischer implemented 14 years ago with the full support of the trade unions, introduced the greatest social attacks in Germany since the Second World War.
The Hartz laws have now become a model for the whole of Europe. In France, the Socialist Party government is in the process of imposing a comparable labour reform, which was also drafted with the assistance of Peter Hartz.
That Berlin is the main centre of poverty is the result of the policies pursued by the SPD/Left Party state government from 2001 to 2011. The government cut wages, privatised public assets and hived off state-owned properties to investors.
The reaction of federal families minister Manuela Schwesig (SPD) to the study was just as cynical as that of the Left Party and Greens. Schwesig pointed to some of the alms handed out by the government in recent times. She included the increase in the child allowance for low-earning parents, the introduction of the minimum wage (of €8.50 per hour) and the parental allowance plus (parents who work part-time after the birth of a child can extend the period of entitlement to parental allowance).
But neither the parental allowance nor the parental allowance plus benefits the poorest. Families claiming Hartz IV have the allowance included in their benefit, so get nothing. The same applies to child benefit, which Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble is considering raising to €2 (per month!)

Many UK museums face closure due to funding cuts

Barry Mason

The National Media Museum (NMM) in the northern city of Bradford experienced a 40 percent drop in the number of visitors last year, compared to 2008, the time of the financial crisis.
In 2001, nearly a million people visited the attraction, but by 2012 this had more than halved. However, the museum is beginning to see a recovery in the number of visitors, recording an 11 percent increase for the year 2015/2016 compared to the previous year.
The NMM is part of the Science Museum Group (SMG), which also includes the Science Museum in London, the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester (MOSI), the National Railway Museum (York) and the National Railway Museum (Shildon). Overall, the SMG saw a 4 percent increase in the number of visits to its museums for the year 2015/2016.
Museums in the SMG group receive around two thirds of their funding from the government Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS). The previous Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government threatened to cut the budget for the group’s museums, and proposals were made that one of SMG museums, though not London’s Science Museum, would have to close. It triggered off a campaign in which each museum had to try to justify why it should not be the one to be closed. It also fuelled a reactionary north-south divide over the fight for dwindling cultural resources.
A campaign to save the NMM, which attracted the support of well-known figures such as Martin Scorsese, Michael Palin and David Hockney, led to over 40,000 signatures on a petition. The petition was handed in to the Science Museum in South Kensington. In the end, the proposed closure of one of the SMG museums was averted. The DCMS budget cut of 8 percent overall went ahead, but the burden on museums was reduced to a 5 percent cut which came into effect in 2015 and has impacted staffing.
As part of the deal to keep the NMM open, it had to emphasise the science aspect of the exhibits and downplay its artistic character. A Guardian article on February 7 of this year noted that minutes of an SMG board meeting stated that “proposals to ‘re-vision’ the National Media Museum began as long ago as September 2013. … At the same meeting, trustees discussed changing the museum’s name. The Guardian has since learned that Science Museum North is one of the names under consideration.”
In line with this, it was announced at the beginning of the year that the NMM would no longer host the Bradford International Film Festival. In the past, this event attracted prestigious figures from the film industry, such as Kenneth Branagh, Alan Bennett and John Hurt, to the city. Film industry insiders fear that this could threaten Bradford’s status as a UNESCO city of film.
Speaking to the Bradford local paper, the Telegraph and Argus, museum director Jo Quinton-Tulloch explained that the museum was developing a festival based on computer games.
She explained, “Film remains a very important part of our future plans, but the festival programme needed changes to make it more sustainable and aligned with the museum’s new focus on the science and culture of light and sound technologies. … [W]e are working towards a festival looking at games and gaming.”
The announcement confirmed the fears of those who believed the cancellation of the festival last year was just the prelude to it being abandoned altogether.
The decision follows on from the earlier decision to move the 400,000 objects comprising the Royal Photographic Society held in Bradford to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The collection includes photographs by the pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot, around 8,000 cameras and the first-ever negative image.
In a Yorkshire Post article of February 2, the renowned international photographer, Ian Beesley, whose works are part of the museum’s collection, opposed the decision to move the collection:
“As a photographic resource it’s second to none. It’s well used by students across the north. … I can’t help but feel that once a museum starts shipping off its crown jewels, the end is really nigh.”
In line with the SMG’s policy of narrowing the focus of the media museum, Quinton-Tulloch told the Yorkshire Life magazine, “This refocus means concentrating our resources on what we do best. … In a time of limited resources and as we refocus our mission, we can no longer do everything we once did.”
The renewed threat to the NMM is part of the ongoing onslaught on museum and art gallery provision. Local Authority cultural resources are at the sharp end of this, as councils are faced with ever increasing government spending cuts.
An article on the Museums Association (MA) web site on July 6 was titled “Museums across the UK face closure threat—MA voices concern about ‘disturbing’ number of venues at risk.”
Highlighting just some of the museums under threat due to the government’s cultural vandalism, it noted that Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire was proposing to halve the museums it runs, including the Red House Museum, which has connections with Charlotte Bronte and is featured in her novel Shirley. It also proposes to close the Tolson Museum, which houses world-class collections.
The article also mentioned the plans to close the Dudley Museum and Art Gallery in the West Midlands as well as plans by Shropshire County Council to slash its £800,000 tourism and museum budget to zero by next year.
The MA director, Sharon Heal, said, “While we recognise that local authorities are under pressure and have to make tough spending decisions, there is a danger that whole communities will be left without museums and the rich and diverse stories they can tell.”
Responding to the autumn statement in November of last year by then-chancellor George Osborne, the director of the Art Fund, Stephen Deucher, told the Museums Association, “Today’s statement is just the beginning, as it is forthcoming local authority settlements that will determine the fate of the majority of the UK’s museums and galleries—the hundreds of installations across the country that are already under-resourced and vulnerable. … [W]e must work hard to ensure the survival of free cultural provision on everyone’s doorstep—beyond the protected nations museums and galleries.”
In a commentary on the future of what museums should look like in 2020 in a Guardian article dated March 2015, cultural historian Robert Hewison noted: “National museums are now having to absorb cuts of a third in public funding. Some of those funded by local authorities are suffering even more. Some may not survive. … [T]he outlook is bleak. ...”

Pacific forum reveals regional geo-strategic tensions

John Braddock

The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) summit at Pohnpei in Micronesia last weekend agreed to admit the French colonies of New Caledonia and French Polynesia as members of the organisation. Wallis and Futuna, another French territory, retains observer status. French Polynesian President Edouard Fritch called the decision “historic,” declaring it would see greater involvement of the territories in regional affairs.
In reality, the move is another sign of deepening geo-strategic tensions as the imperialist powers seek to counter Beijing’s growing influence in the southwest Pacific. France, a major imperialist power, is being brought forward to buttress the position of the US and its local allies, Australia and New Zealand.
The French territories are strategically significant. New Caledonia has a key military base and is one of the world’s largest suppliers of nickel, an essential element in armaments manufacture. French Polynesia was the site of France’s nuclear testing program at Mururoa Atoll from 1966-1996.
Since the forum’s founding in 1971, Canberra and Wellington have used the 16-member body as a vehicle for their own neo-colonial interests. Their dominance began to break up after they imposed sanctions on Fiji following its 2006 military coup. Fiji’s regime turned elsewhere, primarily to China and Russia, for trade, aid and military equipment.
Frank Bainimarama, Fiji’s military leader, who was elected prime minster in 2014, has encouraged other Pacific nations to take a more “independent” stance. In 2012, Fiji set up the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) as an alternative to the PIF. While Fiji was readmitted to the PIF two years ago, Bainimarama boycotted the summit, sending his foreign minister in his place.
Last weekend, as the forum was sitting, Bainimarama reshuffled his cabinet, relieving Foreign Minister Ratu Inoke Kubuabola of his job and taking it on himself. Australia’s ABC political editor Chris Uhlmann described the sacking as “a calculated slap down of the forum, aimed at showing Australia and New Zealand that Fiji does not need them to make its way in the world.” Noting that the summit was being held in a sports centre financed by China, Uhlmann warned that while China had been “making friends in the Pacific,” Australia had been “making enemies.”
Fiji’s trade minister Faiyaz Koya last week announced Fiji was withdrawing from talks on a Pacific-wide trade deal, the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (Pacer Plus), citing backtracks on key commitments by Australia and New Zealand. Papua New Guinea has also withdrawn from the agreement.
At last year’s PIF meeting, Tony Abbott, then Australian prime minister, and New Zealand’s John Key tried to strong-arm the Pacific states, prior to the ecological summit in Paris, into accepting lower carbon emission targets even though rising sea levels threaten their survival. Bainimarama led a rebellion by the Pacific countries in Paris, declaring the Pacific was “bearing the brunt” of climate change.
This year, after lobbying by France, New Zealand and Australia, the vote to admit New Caledonia and French Polynesia to the PIF was unanimous. France has been pushing for membership for its territories since 2003. Their inclusion was resisted by the other island states because the forum is meant to be for “independent” countries, even though their own “independence” has always been extremely limited, largely because of the ongoing domination of the former colonial powers, Australia and New Zealand.
The legacy of France’s nuclear testing has long fuelled opposition to the encroachment of France into regional policy. Canberra and Wellington have always viewed France as an imperialist competitor. New Zealand’s “anti-nuclear” stance in the 1970s and 1980s sought to diminish French influence. Mutual antagonism reached fever pitch in 1985 when the French secret service bombed the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour.
Opening the door to wider French influence in Pacific affairs is therefore a significant shift. According to Radio NZ, France had been able to “defy the forum for decades and now [it] gets to sit—indirectly—at the Forum table.”
The decision coincided with an anti-China witch-hunting campaign by the Australian media and political establishment aimed at ramping up an atmosphere for war preparations with China. On August 29, analyst Hugh White told the ABC’s “Pacific Beat” program that China was seeking to become “perhaps the leading power” in the western Pacific. It was cultivating closer relationships with “even the smallest and most remote” countries. Any improvement in China’s position, he declared, would be a “negative for Washington.”
In fact, China’s expansion into the Pacific has been primarily in response to the Obama administration’s aggressive “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific. Within the next five years, 60 percent of the US Navy’s warships will be operating in the Pacific. Military facilities in South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Singapore are being upgraded, along with the expanded use of Australian ports and bases. In a break with New Zealand’s longstanding “anti-nuclear” policy, a US warship is to visit the country in November.
According to the Sydney-based Lowy Institute, China has overtaken Australia as the biggest source of aid to Fiji, and will soon surpass Canberra’s aid to Samoa and Tonga. Beijing’s aid exceeds that from New Zealand and Japan and, at $US1.8 billion, is on the verge of overtaking the US in terms of total aid delivered to the Pacific islands since 2006.
Trade between China and the Pacific doubled last year. The ABC reported that in 2015 total trade reached $US7.5 billion, up from $4.5 billion in 2014. Most of the growth has come from China’s exports to the region, but the Pacific’s exports to China are also expanding, led by the Papua New Guinea’s liquefied natural gas projects. Fish products and timber are the other major exports. More than half of Solomon Islands’ total export income comes from logs sent to China.
The Chinese technology giant Huawei has a major regional presence, working with Pacific telecommunications providers, governments, and businesses to develop subsea cables, networks and datacentres. In 2013, the Australian government stopped Huawei being awarded contracts for a major fibre-optic Internet infrastructure project. The ban was imposed, on bogus “security” grounds, at the behest of Washington. Documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden confirmed that the US engaged for years in a campaign of industrial espionage against Huawei.
The expansion of France, a European imperialist power, into the Pacific is a sharp warning of the deepening tensions and march to war. In his ABC interview last month, White warned that the growing pattern of rivalry in the Pacific is “what you would expect to see in the lead-up to conflict.”

The true cost of the American gulag: $1 trillion a year

Catherine Long

A new report from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri details the social and economic cost of imprisoning 2 million people in the United States. The study, “The Economic Burden of Incarceration,” from the university’s Concordance Institute for Advancing Social Justice, assesses the economic costs to individuals, families, and communities.
The United States imprisons more people than any other country on earth, per capita and in absolute numbers. The increase in incarceration since 1980 is staggering, from approximately 490,000 in all institutions to 2 million by 2014. The budgeted cost of US federal and state prison systems is $80 billion per year.
The Washington University study rejects that figure, saying the actual cost, when considering all the social impacts of removing so many people from economic and social life for such long periods of time, is closer to $1 trillion (1,000 billion dollars).
The authors introduce their study by stating, “Estimating social costs of incarceration is problematic because it is difficult to disentangle the effects of incarceration from the effects of poverty.” The “burden,” in any case, is the mass poverty of millions of people. The social consequences of imprisonment—lifetime earnings loss due to lower chance of employment, erosion of work-related skills, and loss of social capital—are estimated at $1.9 billion to $4.9 billion per year, depending on education level.
For the sake of the study, figures were underestimated so the social costs may be much higher than $1 trillion. The statistics generated in this study are shocking. Having one parent in prison increases infant mortality by 40 percent. The cost, in extra child lives lost per year, is estimated at $1.2 billion per year. Having one parent in prison increases high school dropouts by 10 percent—by the numbers, 62,731 children per year. Thirty percent of the new foster care cases are due to the higher incidence of women in prison, a mind-boggling 716 percent increase since the 1980s.
Costs borne by families through monthly visits, evictions, moves and divorces are all discussed in the study. The cumulative costs to families is over $27 billion a year. The economic cost of the psychological effects of imprisonment are also tallied. Lifelong financial losses due to depression, PTSD, and anxiety suffered by prisoners are totaled at $10.2 billion per year.
These cumulative totals demonstrate in financial terms the human cost of incarceration. Although the average prison term is 2.25 years per this study, racial and economic disparities in sentencing shift this figure significantly. Sentences for “white collar” crimes are commonly served in minimum security detention for short periods of time. According to the Transactional Records Clearinghouse (TRAC), the Justice Department’s white collar prosecution rate is down 92 percent from 20 years ago. Judges adjudicating white collar crimes have “discretion” over sentencing guidelines and frequently give much shorter sentences.
Poor defendants, lacking adequate representation, plead guilty more often in hopes of leniency. A study by Megan Stevenson in Baltimore found “only 51 percent of those charged with bail of $500 or less were able to pay the minimum 10 percent required to go free within three days.” Sentences for minor crimes like drug possession can turn into life sentences with current mandatory minimum sentences and “three strikes” laws. In Louisiana, one of the poorest states, 91.4 percent of the nonviolent black prisoners serving life without parole are doing so because of such laws.
Hyperincarceration, as it’s termed in the study, is criticized for being “unnecessary, counterproductive, and prohibitively expensive.” The financial crash of 2008 “highlight[s] the fiscal unsustainability of hyperincarceration,” i.e., the federal and state burden of continued funding for jails and prisons. These costs are delineated by Henrichson and Delaney, a reference cited for the “Economic Burden” study, as budget items such as “employee benefits, capital costs, in-prison education services, or hospital care for inmates.” Giving the incarcerated housing, education, and health care is considered too costly. For the ruling class, every bit of capital that is not returning to Wall Street is considered a burden.
Why have incarceration rates gone up so much in the last 40 years? Since the 1980s, workers have seen an assault on living standards from all sides: deindustrialization, globalization, and the financialization of the economy; Clinton’s welfare reform; Bush’s repeated budget cuts in social programs; Obama’s cuts to federal assistance in housing and food stamps; and the nationwide erosion of funding for public education.
Persistent unemployment continues. As of July this year, the level of long-term unemployment remains at more than 25 percent of total unemployment. The desperation among the poor is explained by the economic and social conditions they have been subject to for generations.
Crime itself is a social phenomenon. Petty crimes of theft, gangs and criminal enterprises, all are a direct result of capitalist exploitation in destroying “legitimate” and sustainable jobs. When people can’t find legal work, they turn to the alternative economy for subsistence. Once in it, they enter a vicious cycle, going through courts, jails and prisons, being further brutalized and alienated.
Like most such academic studies, however, the report on the economic burden of incarceration offers no broader insights into the meaning of its findings. Its conclusion offers a passing criticism that the US prison system is perhaps too large, “beyond that which is socially optimal.” This soporific phrase testifies to the political blinders on the report’s authors, who have documented the vast extent of an American gulag, apparently without ever questioning what vast, hidden social tensions require such a hideous apparatus of coercion and repression.

15 Sept 2016

60 Max Weber Post-Doctoral Fellowships for International Scholars 2017 – Florence, Italy

Application Deadline: 25th October, 2016
Offered annually? Yes
Eligible Countries: All countries
To be taken at (country): Italy
Eligible Fields of Study: Economics, History, Law and Social and Political sciences. All areas and types of research within these fields are considered.
About the Award: Amongst the largest, most prestigious and successful post doctoral programmes in the historical and social sciences, and located in one of the most beautiful settings, with truly outstanding research facilities, we offer from 50-60 fully funded 1 and 2 year post doctoral fellowships to applicants from anywhere in the world in the fields of economics, history, law and social and political sciences. All areas and types of research within these fields are considered. Last year 98% of Fellows found an academic position on completing the Fellowship.
Type: Research Fellowship
Eligibility: 
  • Candidates must have received their Ph.D within the past 5 years or have official approval to defend their thesis by the time of the start of the programme (1 September). Therefore, to apply for 2017-18 they should have received or submitted their Ph.D. between 1/9/2012 and 1/9/2017 and the Ph.D defence should take place no later than 31/12/2017.
  • Extensions to the five-year rule are allowed for applicants whose academic career has been interrupted for maternity or paternity leave, illness or mandatory military service. Cite circumstances in the application form in the field ‘Additional Notes’. Successful candidates will be asked to provide supporting documents.
  • EUI graduates can only apply for a Max Weber Fellowships after having been away from the EUI and in a full-time occupation or another fellowship for at least a year after defending their Ph.D
  • Candidates of any nationality are eligible for the Max Weber Fellowships.
  • The expected level of English proficiency is level C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR).Successful candidates will be requested to provide a certificate/supporting document on registration. This can be one of the international certificates listed below, or a supporting document showing that the candidate has written the doctorate, or published an article or a book chapter of at least 6000 words in English, or has studied and hold a qualification from a University where the language of instruction and assessment was English. Native English speakers are exempt of proof.The following international certificates of English proficiency are recognised by the EUI:
    • IELTS
    • TOEFL (IBT)
    • Cambridge Proficiency
    • Cambridge English: Advanced (CAE)
Selection Criteria:
  • Academic accomplishments and potential: Academic excellence is assessed on the basis of the candidate’s contributions (publications, PhD thesis, etc. as outlined in the CV), their plans and commitment to an academic career as outlined in their ‘Research Proposal’ and ‘Academic career statement’, and other supporting evidence (i.e. two letters of reference). Preference is given to applicants in the early stages of their post-doctoral career, who can gain most from the programme.
  • Research Proposal: the proposal must be clear and well structured, with well-defined and realistic goals that can be achieved within the duration of the fellowship.
  • Mentorship: The capacity and availability of EUI faculty, be it in the departments or the RSCAS, to provide mentorship is taken into account; however, while having common research interests may be helpful, it is not a necessity for mentorship
Number of Awardees: 50 to 60 candidates
Value of Fellowship:
  • The Fellowship provides a grant of 2000 euro per month plus – when appropriate – a family allowance.
  • The Max Weber Fellows enjoy the superb research facilities of the European University Institute (including an outstanding library, a shared office space, and a personal research fund of 1000 euros).
  • The MWP is unique among postdoctoral programmes in helping Fellows to become full members of a global academic community.
  • Fellows are given training and support in all aspects of an academic career – from publishing and presenting, teaching, applying for research grants and jobs. A particular focus is placed on communicating effectively in English to different kinds of academic audiences.
  • Its placement record is second to none: most Max Weber Fellows secure an academic position in the finest institutions around the world upon completion of the Programme.
Duration of Fellowship: 1 and 2 year post doctoral fellowships
How to Apply: The annual deadline is 25 October, but applications for self-funded fellowships will be considered until 25 March. Visit Fellowship Application Webpage to apply
Award Provider: The Max Weber Fellowship

PEO International Peace Scholarships for Women to Study in USA and Canada 2016/2017

Application Timeline: 
  • Application Opens: 15th September, 2016
  • Application closes: 15th December, 2016
  • March 1, 2017: Last day to submit completed application materials from applicants already enrolled in the graduate program and school for which their scholarship is intended.
  • April 1, 2017: Last day to submit completed application materials from applicants not yet enrolled in the graduate program or school for which the scholarship is intended. Last day to submit completed application materials for applicants who will be attending Cottey College
  • May 2017: Notification of scholarship awards
  • June 1, 2017: Last day for students to accept IPS scholarships
Offered Annually: Yes
About Scholarship: Members of P.E.O. believe that education is fundamental to world peace and understanding. The scholarship is based upon demonstrated need; however, the award is not intended to cover all academic or personal expenses.
Eligibility and Criteria
  • An applicant must be qualified for admission to full-time graduate study and working toward a graduate degree in an accredited college or university in the united States or canada.
  • A student who is a citizen or permanent resident of the United States or Canada is noteligible.
  • Scholarships are not given for research, internships, or practical training, unless it is combined with coursework. Awards are not to be used to pay past debts.
  • In order to qualify for her first scholarship, an applicant must have a full year of coursework remaining, be enrolled and in residence for the entire school year.
  • Doctoral students who have completed coursework and are working only on dissertations are not eligible as first-time applicants.
  • international students attending cottey college are eligible to apply for a scholarship.
Scholarship Worth
The maximum amount awarded to a student is $12,500. Lesser amounts may be awarded according to individual needs.
The scholarship is based upon demonstrated financial need; however, the award is not intended to cover all academic or personal expenses. At the time of application, the applicant is required to confirm additional financial resources adequate to meet her estimated expenses. Additional resources may include personal and family funds, tuition waivers, work scholarships, teaching assistantships, study grants and other scholarships.
Awards are announced in May. The amount of the PEO International scholarship will be divided into two payments to be distributed in August and December
Application Guideline and Procedures
  • Information concerning the international peace Scholarship program is available from the P.E.O. Executive Office or from the website at peointernational.org.
  • Eligibility must be established before application material is made available. Eligibility information and application deadlines can be found at any time on the P.E.O. website.
  • Information concerning admission to Cottey college may be obtained by writing to the coordinator of Admissions, Cottey College, Nevada, Missouri 64772, or visit them at cottey.edu.
Awards are announced in May. The amount of the scholarship will be divided into two payments to be distributed in August and December.


100 Jim Ovia Scholarships for Nigerian Students 2016

Application Deadline: Opens today 15th September 2016 to 15th November 2016 | 
Offered annually? Yes
Eligible Countries: Nigerian citizens
To be taken at (country): Nigerian universities
Eligible Field of Study: All courses offered at Nigerian universities
About Scholarship: The Jim Ovia Scholarships was founded since 1998. It is fully funded by Mr. Jim Ovia to provide financial aid to outstanding Nigeria youths. The scholarship was previously known as the MUSTE scholarship. Since October 2010, Mr. Ovia has invested over 100 Million Naira in the program to support 1500 beneficiaries and counting.
In establishing the Jim Ovia Scholarships, Mr. Ovia hoped to create a network of future leaders within Nigeria who can compete globally with their peers, bring new ideas, creativity and are committed to improving the lives and circumstances of people in their respective communities.
Over time it is expected that the Jim Ovia Scholarship beneficiaries will become leaders in helping to address challenges related to health, technology, and finance, all areas in which the foundation is deeply engaged.
Scholarship Offered Since: 1998
Scholarship Type: undergraduate and graduate degrees
Eligibility
The scholarship is open to all potential students of Nigerian citizenship. One hundred (100) awardees are selected each year from a pool of eligible applicants.
Selection Criteria
Scholarships are awarded on the basis of personal intellectual ability, leadership capability and a desire to use their knowledge to contribute to society throughout Nigeria by providing service to their community and applying their talent and knowledge to improve the lives of others.
Number of Scholarships: The scheme offers an average of 100 opportunities each year for new applicants while renewing applicants are supported annually, conditional on meeting all eligible requirements of the scholarship
Value of Scholarship: Scholarship covers tuition fee and maintenance allowances.
Duration of Scholarship: for the period of the program
How to Apply
  • Go to jimoviafoundation.org. Click on ‘LOG IN’ or ‘REGISTER NOW’ at top right hand corner of the homepage
  • Create a new account or login with your existing credentials if you already have a Jim Ovia Scholar Account
  • Between September 15 and November 15 when the scholarship application form becomes available, you can begin your application. Ensure to fill out all the data completely and accurately on your application.
Application Requirement
  • Completed online application
  • Valid Government ID (e.g. International passport, Voter’s Card, National ID or Driver’s License). The only exception will be for minors below the age of 18 years who are unable to apply for a government ID. In which case, a birth certificate will be accepted in lieu of a government ID for such minors.
  • An official original letter (not photocopied) from your school/Head of Department stating the following: – Your full-name – Course Title – Department of Study – CGPA – Gender – Matriculation number OR Newly matriculated who have not yet received a matriculation number or school ID must provide a provisional admission letter to their institution of study.
  • Original Secondary School Certificate (WAEC or NECO)
  • Original JAMB certificate
  • A valid student ID for your host institution  (University/College)
  • A passport photograph
Scholarship Provider: Jim Ovia Foundation

Assad’s Death Warrant

Mike Whitney


“Secret cables and reports by the U.S., Saudi and Israeli intelligence agencies indicate that the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline, military and intelligence planners quickly arrived at the consensus that fomenting a Sunni uprising in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative Bashar Assad was a feasible path to achieving the shared objective of completing the Qatar/Turkey gas link. In 2009, according to WikiLeaks, soon after Bashar Assad rejected the Qatar pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition groups in Syria.”
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria, Politico
The conflict in Syria is not a war in the conventional sense of the word. It is a regime change operation, just like Libya and Iraq were regime change operations.
The main driver of the conflict is the country that’s toppled more than 50 sovereign governments since the end of World War 2.  (See: Bill Blum here.) We’re talking about the United States of course.
Washington is the hands-down regime change champion, no one else even comes close. That being the case, one might assume that the American people would notice the pattern of intervention, see through the propaganda and assign blame accordingly. But that never  seems to happen and it probably won’t happen here either. No matter how compelling the evidence may be, the brainwashed American people always believe their government is doing the right thing.
But the United States is not doing the right thing in Syria. Arming, training and funding Islamic extremists — that have killed half a million people, displaced 7 million more and turned the country into an uninhabitable wastelands –is not the right thing. It is the wrong thing, the immoral thing. And the US is involved in this conflict for all the wrong reasons, the foremost of which is gas. The US wants to install a puppet regime in Damascus so it can secure pipeline corridors in the East, oversee the transport of vital energy reserves from Qatar to the EU, and make sure that those reserves continue to be denominated in US Dollars that are recycled into US Treasuries and US financial assets. This is the basic recipe for maintaining US dominance in the Middle East and for extending America’s imperial grip on global power into the future.
The war in Syria did not begin when the government of Bashar al Assad cracked down on protestors in the spring of 2011. That version of events is obfuscating hogwash.  The war began in 2009, when Assad rejected a Qatari plan to transport gas from Qatar to the EU via Syria. As Robert F Kennedy Jr. explains in his excellent article “Syria: Another pipeline War”:
“The $10 billion, 1,500km pipeline through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey….would have linked Qatar directly to European energy markets via distribution terminals in Turkey… The Qatar/Turkey pipeline would have given the Sunni Kingdoms of the Persian Gulf decisive domination of world natural gas markets and strengthen Qatar, America’s closest ally in the Arab world. ….
In 2009, Assad announced that he would refuse to sign the agreement to allow the pipeline to run through Syria “to protect the interests of our Russian ally….
Assad further enraged the Gulf’s Sunni monarchs by endorsing a Russian approved “Islamic pipeline” running from Iran’s side of the gas field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon. The Islamic pipeline would make Shia Iran instead of Sunni Qatar, the principal supplier to the European energy market and dramatically increase Tehran’s influence in the Mid-East and the world…”
Naturally, the Saudis, Qataris, Turks and Americans were furious at Assad, but what could they do? How could they prevent him from choosing his own business partners and using his own sovereign territory to transport gas to market?
What they could do is what any good Mafia Don would do; break a few legs and steal whatever he wanted. In this particular situation, Washington and its scheming allies decided to launch a clandestine proxy-war against Damascus, kill or depose Assad, and make damn sure the western oil giants nabbed the future pipeline contracts and controlled the flow of energy to Europe. That was the plan at least. Here’s more from Kennedy:
“Secret cables and reports by the U.S., Saudi and Israeli intelligence agencies indicate that the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline, military and intelligence planners quickly arrived at the consensus that fomenting a Sunni uprising in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative Bashar Assad was a feasible path to achieving the shared objective of completing the Qatar/Turkey gas link. In 2009, according to WikiLeaks, soon after Bashar Assad rejected the Qatar pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition groups in Syria.
Repeat: “the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline”, he signed his own death warrant. That single act was the catalyst for the US aggression that transformed a bustling, five thousand-year old civilization into a desolate Falluja-like moonscape overflowing with homicidal fanatics that were recruited, groomed and deployed by the various allied intelligence agencies.
But what’s particularly interesting about this story is that the US attempted a nearly-identical plan 60 years earlier during the Eisenhower administration. Here’s another clip from the Kennedy piece:
“During the 1950′s, President Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers … mounted a clandestine war against Arab Nationalism — which CIA Director Allan Dulles equated with communism — particularly when Arab self-rule threatened oil concessions. They pumped secret American military aid to tyrants in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon favoring puppets with conservative Jihadist ideologies which they regarded as a reliable antidote to Soviet Marxism….
The CIA began its active meddling in Syria in 1949 — barely a year after the agency’s creation…. Syria’s democratically elected president, Shukri-al-Kuwaiti, hesitated to approve the Trans Arabian Pipeline, an American project intended to connect the oil fields of Saudi Arabia to the ports of Lebanon via Syria. (so)… the CIA engineered a coup, replacing al-Kuwaiti with the CIA’s handpicked dictator, a convicted swindler named Husni al-Za’im. Al-Za’im barely had time to dissolve parliament and approve the American pipeline before his countrymen deposed him, 14 weeks into his regime…..
(CIA agent Rocky) Stone arrived in Damascus in April 1956 with $3 million in Syrian pounds to arm and incite Islamic militants and to bribe Syrian military officers and politicians to overthrow al-Kuwaiti’s democratically elected secularist regime….
But all that CIA money failed to corrupt the Syrian military officers. The soldiers reported the CIA’s bribery attempts to the Ba’athist regime. In response, the Syrian army invaded the American Embassy taking Stone prisoner. Following harsh interrogation, Stone made a televised confession to his roles in the Iranian coup and the CIA’s aborted attempt to overthrow Syria’s legitimate government….(Then) Syria purged all politicians sympathetic to the U.S. and executed them for treason.” (Politico)
See how history is repeating itself? It’s like the CIA was too lazy to even write a new script, they just dusted off the old one and hired new actors.
Fortunately, Assad –with the help of Iran, Hezbollah and the Russian Airforce– has fended off the effort to oust him and install a US-stooge. This should not be taken as a ringing endorsement of Assad as a leader, but of the principal that global security depends on basic protections of national sovereignty, and that the cornerstone of international law has to be a rejection of unprovoked aggression whether the hostilities are executed by one’s own military or by armed proxies that are used to achieve the same strategic objectives while invoking  plausible deniability. The fact is, there is no difference between Bush’s invasion of Iraq and Obama’s invasion of Syria. The moral, ethical and legal issues are the same, the only difference is that Obama has been more successful in confusing the American people about what is really going on.
And what’s going on is regime change: “Assad must go”. That’s been the administration’s mantra from the get go. Obama and Co are trying to overthrow a democratically-elected secular regime that refuses to bow to Washington’s demands to provide access to pipeline corridors that will further strengthen US dominance in the region.  That’s what’s really going on behind the ISIS distraction and the “Assad is a brutal dictator” distraction and the “war-weary civilians in Aleppo” distraction. Washington doesn’t care about any of those things. What Washington cares about is oil, power and money. How can anyone be confused about that by now?  Kennedy summed it up like this:
“We must recognize the Syrian conflict is a war over control of resources indistinguishable from the myriad clandestine and undeclared oil wars we have been fighting in the Mid-East for 65 years. And only when we see this conflict as a proxy war over a pipeline do events become comprehensible.”
That says it all, don’t you think?

Monsanto And The Poisonous Cartel Of GMOs In India

Vandana Shiva


India is steeped in a synthesized controversy created by Monsanto on the first GMO crop supposedly approved for commercialization. Engaged in litigation on many fronts, Monsanto is trying to subvert India’s patent laws: Protection of Plant Variety and Farmers Right ActEssential Commodities Act and Competition Act. It is behaving as if there is no Parliament, no democracy, no sovereign laws in India to which it is subject. Or it simply doesn’t have any regard for them.
In another theatre, Monsanto and Bayer are merging. They were one as MoBay (MonsantoBayer), part of the poison cartel of I.G. Farben. The controlling stakes of both corporations lie with the same private equity firms. The expertise of these firms is in war. I.G. Farben, Adolf Hitler’s economic powerhouse and pre-war Germany’s highest foreign exchange earner, was also a foreign intelligence operation. Hermann Schmitz was president of I.G. Farben, Schmitz’s nephew Max Ilgner was a director of I.G. Farben, while Max’s brother Rudolph Ilgner ran the New York arm as vice-president of Chemnyco.
Paul Warburg, brother of Max Warburg (board of directors, Farben Aufsichtsrat), founded the U.S. Federal Reserve System. Max Warburg and Hermann Schmitz played a central role in the Farben empire. Other “guiding hands” of Farben Vorstand included Carl Bosch, Fritz ter Meer, Kurt Oppenheim and George von Schnitzler. Each of them was adjudged a “war criminal” after World War II, except Paul Warburg.
Monsanto and Bayer have a long history. They made explosives and lethally poisonous gases using shared technologies and sold them to both sides in the two world wars. The same war chemicals were bought by the Allied and Axis powers, from the same manufacturers, with money borrowed from the same bank.
MoBay supplied ingredients for Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. Around 20 million gallons of MoBay defoliants and herbicides were sprayed over South Vietnam. Children are still being born with birth defects, adults have chronic illnesses and cancers, due to their exposure to MoBay’s chemicals. Monsanto and Bayer’s cross-licensed Agent Orange resistance has also been cross-developed for decades. Wars were fought, lives lost, nations carved into holy lands — with artificial boundaries that suit colonization and resource grab — while Bayer and Monsanto sold chemicals as bombs and poisons and their brothers provided the loans to buy those bombs.
More recently, Bayer CropScience AG and Monsanto are believed to have entered into a long-term business relationship. This gives Monsanto and Bayer free access to each other’s herbicide and paired herbicide resistance technology. Through cross-licensing agreements, mergers and acquisitions, the biotech industry has become the I.G. Farben of today, with Monsanto in the cockpit.
The global chemical and GMO industry—Bayer, Dow Agro, DuPont Pioneer, Mahyco, Monsanto and Syngenta—have come together to form the Federation of Seed Industry of India (FSII) to try and become bigger bullies in this assault on India’s farmers, environment and democratically-framed laws that protect the public and the national interest. This is in addition to Association of Biotechnology-Led Enterprises (ABLE), which tried to challenge India’s seed price control order issued under the Essential Commodities Act in the Karnataka high court. The case was dismissed.
The new group is not “seed industry;” they produce no seeds. They try to stretch patents on chemicals to claim ownership on seeds, even in countries where patents on seeds and plants are not allowed. This is the case in India, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and many other countries.
All Monsanto cases in India are related to Monsanto un-scientifically, illegally and illegitimately claiming patents on seed, in contempt of India’s laws, and trying to collect royalties from the Indian seed industry and farmers. The FSII is an “I.G. Farben 100-Year Family Reunion,” a coming together of independent and autonomous entities.
The Farben family chemical cartel was responsible for exterminating people in concentration camps. It embodies a century of ecocide and genocide, carried out in the name of scientific experimentation and innovation. Today, the poison cartel is wearing G-Engineering clothes and citing the mantra of “innovation” ad nauseam. Hitler’s concentration camps were an “innovation” in killing; and almost a century later, the Farben family is carrying out the same extermination—silently, globally and efficiently.
Monsanto’s “innovation” of collecting illegal royalties and pushing Indian farmers to suicide is also an innovation in killing without liability, indirectly. Just because there is a new way to kill doesn’t make killing right. “Innovation,” like every human activity, has limits—set by ethics, justice, democracy, the rights of people and of nature.
I.G. Farben was tried in Nuremberg. We have national laws to protect people, their right to life and public health, and the environment. India’s biosafety and patent laws and the Plant Variety Act are designed to regulate greedy owners of corporations with a history of crimes against nature and humanity.
Industry is getting ready to push its next “gene,” the GMO mustard (DMH-11). The GMO mustard, being promoted as a public sector “innovation,” is based on barnase/barstar/gene system to create male-sterile plants and a bar gene for glufosinate resistance. In 2002, Pro-Agro’s (Bayer) application for approval of commercial planting of GM mustard based on the same system was turned down.
Although banned in India, Bayer finds ways to sell glufosinate illegally to Assam’s tea gardens and the apple orchards of Himachal Pradesh. Sales agents show the sale of glufosinate under the “others” category to avoid regulation. These chemicals are finding their way into the bodies of our children without government approval. Essentially, all key patents related to the bar gene are held by Bayer Crop Science, which acquired Aventis Cropscience, which itself was created out of the genetic engineering divisions of Schering, Rhone Poulenc and Hoechst. Then Bayer acquired Plant Genetic Systems and entered into cooperation agreement with Evogene, which has patents on genome mapping.
Before any approval is granted to genetically-engineered mustard, the issue of limits to patentability needs to be resolved on the basis of Indian laws and patents on plants and seeds and methods of agriculture must not be allowed. Deepak Pental, a retired professor and GMO-Operative, will not commercialize GMO mustard seed. His officers at Bayer/Monsanto/MoBay will.
Given our experience with GMO cotton, The Ministry of Environment & Forests is considering the option of putting in place guidelines for socio-economic assessment to judge proposed GMO varieties on the basis of factors such as the economy, health, environment, society and culture.
At the core of socio-economic assessment is the issue of monopolies and cartels, and their impact on small farmers. Even though patents on seeds are not allowed, for more than a decade and a half, Monsanto has extracted illegal royalties from Indian farmers, trapping them in debt and triggering an epidemic of farmers’ suicides. Monsanto’s war on India’s foot soldiers—farmers—is a war being waged by the Farben family, on our Earth family.

An Asteroid Called “Peak Oil” – The Real Cause Of The Growing Social Inequality In The US

Ugo Bardi


In a recent article on the Huffington Post, Stan Sorscher reports the graph above and asks the question of what could have happened in the early 1970s that changed everything. Impressive, but what caused this “something” that happened in the early 1970s? According to Sorscher,
X marks the spot. In this case, “X” is our choice of national values. We abandoned traditional American values that built a great and prosperous nation.  
Unfortunately, this is a classic case of an explanation that doesn’t explain anything. Why did the American people decide to abandon traditional American values just at that specific moment in time?
In reality, the turning point of that time has been known for a long time. The first to notice it were Harry Bluestone and Bennet Harrison with their 1988 book “The Great U-turn: Corporate Restructuring And The Polarizing Of America.” They noted that a lot of economic parameters had completely reversed their historical trends in the early 1970s, including the overall inequality measured in terms of the Gini coefficient. For nearly a century, the US society had been moving toward a higher degree of equality. From the early 1970s, the trend changed direction, bringing the US to an inequality level similar to that of the average South-American countries.
So, what was that “something” that changed everything in the early 1970s? Nobody really knows for sure, but at least there was a major measurable change that took place in 1970: peak oil in the US. (image below, from Wikipedia).
It was a true asteroid that hit the US economy and that changed a lot of things. Possibly the most important change was that the US ceased to be an oil exporter and became an oil importer. That change was “user transparent,” in the sense that the Americans who were filling up the tanks of their cars didn’t know where the oil that had produced their gasoline was coming from (and mostly didn’t even care). But the change implied a major transfer of capital from the US to foreign producers, while a large part of it returned to the US in the form of investments. It was the “petrodollar recycling” phenomenon that mainly affected the financial system; all that money never really trickled down to the poorer sections of the US society. That may well explain the increasing inequality trend that started in the early 1970s.
But, if the oil peak of 1970 explains the inequality trends, shouldn’t the new reversal of the trend – the “shale oil revolution” change everything again? Perhaps surprisingly, there is some evidence that this may be the case
The data from the World Bank indicate that the Gini coefficient for the US has peaked in 2006 and has remained constant, or slightly declining, ever since. Again, that makes some sense; one wouldn’t have expected a return to the low inequality values of the 1960s since the great shale oil boom didn’t transform the US into an oil exporter. At present, with the recent peaking of the Bakken field, it looks like that the good times of half a century ago will never return.
All this would require a lot of work to be better quantified and proven. But it is not a surprise that our life depends so much and so deeply on the production of that vital black liquid that we call “crude oil”. And with the probable downturn of the US production that seems to be starting right now, we are going to see more, and more radical, changes in our society. What these changes will be, we have to see, but it is hard to think that they will be for better equality.